VANITAS

Rating:
Summary: compelling modern tale of love, art fraud and compulsion
Review: I began reading this book with great anticipation, having enjoyed "Clara's Heart" in the past. There are interesting twists to this novel - an intense, important friendship between the main character and a female-ex lover, a complicated relationship between Bobby and the art collector, but, but, but. What I really missed was any sense of real emotional depth between the characters in these supposed love relationships, once again seeing gay men portrayed as having no ability to do anything except have sex. Would some other author besides David Leavitt please bear witness to this amazing fact? And maybe give us some gay men who are, for once, not the hallmark of physical perfection---that would be an original idea!!

Rating:
Summary: Haunting and touching
Review: I enjoyed this novel a lot. It is nice to find a US author who can write reasonably well about the UK (although there were a lot of "Oxbridge" accents mentioned). I think the element of mystery/suspense should also be stressed...the reader is led along and made to wait for explanations. The characterisation is good: Sam and Bobby are not "one-dimensional" and Elliot Garland is a very well-observed and understandable portrait. The funniest moment for me was the darkly satirical account of the publisher's lunch in Manhattan. I also enjoyed the art history angle.

Rating:
Summary: Adressing love in the time of plague
Review: Joseph Olshan continues to offer credence to the fact that his is a fine craftsman of the English language. His ability to delineate characters is keen and refreshing. "Vanitas" as a story wanders through England and the United States weaving a tale of intrigue, mystery, and passion among 4 disparate central characters. Rarely has the case for the agony of intimacy been so carefully explored. The current plague of AIDS has slipped away from literature in the past few years as new treatments and media discussion have made it seem somehow less terrible. It is books such as this that place this tragic quirk of nature in the foreground, making us remember how it has changed all our lives and how it continues to raise its specter in seemingly coincidental ways. This is a well written novel that carries a new warning that Vanitas of Solomon's writings and especially the descriptive use of the Still Life as a reminder of mortality is a potent as ever.

Rating:
Summary: Adressing love in the time of plague
Review: Joseph Olshan continues to offer credence to the fact that his is a fine craftsman of the English language. His ability to delineate characters is keen and refreshing. "Vanitas" as a story wanders through England and the United States weaving a tale of intrigue, mystery, and passion among 4 disparate central characters. Rarely has the case for the agony of intimacy been so carefully explored. The current plague of AIDS has slipped away from literature in the past few years as new treatments and media discussion have made it seem somehow less terrible. It is books such as this that place this tragic quirk of nature in the foreground, making us remember how it has changed all our lives and how it continues to raise its specter in seemingly coincidental ways. This is a well written novel that carries a new warning that Vanitas of Solomon's writings and especially the descriptive use of the Still Life as a reminder of mortality is a potent as ever.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical Vanitas Will Linger In Your Mind
Review: Simply haunting and darkly erotic. I finished reading Vanitas over a month ago, and the characters still linger in my mind: Sam the writer, a lonely outsider searching for a sense of family, longing for a child of his own and conflicted by his new love interest, Bobby; Jessie the strong single mother and former lover of Sam who carries on a not-so-secret affair with a British bloke; Bobby the haunted artist who had to flee America due to a scandal; Garland the dying art auctioneer who has commissioned Sam to ghostwrite his memoirs for publication, yet tries at all costs to keep from uncovering the secrets of his past.

Joseph Olshan has always been blessed with a keen ear for dialogue--particularly the awkward language of lovers quarreling. He captures perfectly the plaintive nature one lover feels when the other cannot see their side--or worse, is indifferent to it.

Vanitas gives us an insider's view of the book publishing world, we learn about art restoration and acquisition, and the career and very dark nature of the artist Géricault. Olshan deftly weaves each element like a finely woven tapestry against a backdrop of London and New York City for settings.

And if you'll notice in the acknowledgments for Vanitas, Olshan acknowledges the late Robert Woolley who urged him to find in a novel a place for his memory. A quick search in Amazon.com's databases uncovered a book called "Going Once" by Robert Woolley, a Sotheby's auctioneer, wherein Woolley acknowledges Joseph Olshan for helping him enormously with his memoir. Is the Garland character in Vanitas based on Woolley? Did Olshan actually ghostwrite Woolley's memoir like the Sam character in Vanitas? I think so.

Vanitas is such a lyrical novel. I rationed out the last fifty pages because I did not want the book to end. Several sequences were as cozy as a warm blanket. Olshan's language is pristine and his pacing is perfect. He always knows the correct emotional chord to strike in each scene, giving us just the right detail from his unique perspective. You'll enjoy his special brand of story-telling. I know I'm reading Vanitas at least once more.

--Jeff Funk

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written, disturbing book that lingers
Review: Vanitas is a beautifully written yet disturbing book about the search for love and family and contentment. (Leave to the amateurs at Amazon.com to pull the one negative comment from the Times review--what's with you guys?) Vanitas is the kind of book that stays with you a long time, the images haunt, the journey of the main character becomes part of your journey. (Still, Clara's Heart and Nightswimmer are this author's best works.) If you're a fan of good writing and well drawn characters, go for it!

Rating:
Summary: Olshan takes on the art world and writes a masterpiece.
Review: VANITAS, the new novel by Joseph Olshan, uses the art world of NYC as the backdrop for a story of love, lost love, desire, hatred and death. This story flows easily from NYC to London and back as the jet setting--on a budget--characters follow those they lust after. There are intriguing hidden agendas and subtle mysteries until the very end that keep you reading and searching for answers--much like the characters in the novel.

If you read Olshan's last novel, NIGHTSWIMMER, and loved it, you should love VANITAS also. VANITAS would be one of very few books I would beg my friends to read--others are THE WHISTLING SONG by Stephen Beachy, LONGING by Paul Reed and WHEN THE PARROT BOY SINGS by John Champagne. All of these works of fiction are similar in that the main chararcters are forever searching for love, following their desires, while tied to events of the past.